 CHAPTER 66 CONCLUSION Oh, my beloved cousin Monica, thank heaven you are living still and younger, I think, than I in all things but years. And Millie, my dear companion, she is now the happy wife of that good little clergyman, Spriggy Biddlepin, and it has been in my power to be of use to them, and he shall have the next presentation to dolling. Meg Hawkeyes, proud and wayward, and the most affectionate creature on earth, was married to Tom Bryce a few months after these events, and, as both wished to immigrate, I furnished them with the capital, and I am told they are likely to be rich. I hear from my kind Meg often, and she seems very happy. My dear old friends Mary Quince and Mrs. Rusk are alas, growing old, but living with me and very happy. And after long solicitation, I persuaded Dr. Briarley, the best and truest of ministers, with my dearest friend's concurrence, to undertake the management of the Derbyshire Estates. In this I have been most fortunate. He is the very person for such a change, so punctual, so laborious, so kind, and so shrewd. In compliance with medical advice, Cousin Monica hurried me away to the Continent, where she would never permit me to allude to the terrific scenes which remained branded so awfully on my brain. It needed no constraint. It is a sort of agony to me, even now, to think of them. The plan was craftily devised. Neither old Wyatt nor Giles, the butler, had suspicion that I had returned to Bartram. Had I been put to death, the secret of my fate would have been deposited in the keeping of four persons only, the two Rithans, Achilles, and ultimately Madame. My dear Cousin Monica had been artfully led to believe in my departure for France and prepared for my silence. Suspicion might not have been excited for a year after my death, and then would never in all probability have pointed to Bartram as the scene of the crime. The weeds would have grown over me, and I should have lain in that deep grave where the corpse of Madame de la Roger was unearthed in the darksome quadrangle of Bartram-Hoff. It was more than two years after that I heard what had befallen at Bartram after my flight. Old Wyatt, who went early to Uncle Silas's room to her surprise, for he had told her that he was, that night, to accompany his son, who had to meet the mail train to Darby at five o'clock in the morning, saw her old master lying on the sofa, much in his usual position. There was not much strange about him, old Wyatt said, but that his scent bottle was spilt on its side over the table, and he did. She thought he was not quite cold when she found him, and she sent the old butler for Dr. Jokes, who said he died of too much lodlam. Of my wretched uncle's religion what am I to say? Was it utter hypocrisy, or had it, at any time, a vein of sincerity in it? I cannot say. I don't believe that he had any heart left for a religion, which is the highest form of affection, to take hold of. Perhaps he was a skeptic, with misgivings about the future, but passed the time for finding anything reliable in it. The devil approached the citadel of his heart by stealth, with many zigzags and parallels. The idea of marrying me to his son by fair means, then by fowl, and, when that wicked chance was gone, then the design of seizing all by murder, supervened. I dare say that Uncle Silas thought for a while that he was a righteous man. He wished to have heaven and to escape hell, if there were such places, but there were other things whose existence was not speculative, of which some he coveted, and some he dreaded more, and temptation came. Now if any man build upon this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble, every man's work shall be made manifest, for the day shall declare it because it shall be revealed by fire, and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is. There comes with old age, a time, when the heart is no longer fusible, or malleable, and it must retain the form in which it has cooled down. He that is unjust, let him be unjust, still, he which is filthy, let him be filthy, still. Dudley had disappeared, but in one of her letters, Meg, writing from her Australian farm, says, There's a fella in tune as calls himself Colbrook with the good house of wood, fifteen foot length, and as by bout a silly know the pearl or a barcham, only a lot of rats, do they say, my lady, by buying and selling of gold back and forward with the digging fork and the merchants. His chick and mouth be rye with the scar of burns and vitral, and no whiskers, bless ye. But my Tom, he told him he know'd him for Master Dudley. I ain't seed him, but he said he'd shoot Tom as soon as look at him, and denied it, with a mouseful of curses and off. Tom ain't right, sure. If I'd a see in once, I'd know for certain, but Appent will best be let be. This was all. Old Hakees stood his ground, relying on the profound cunning with which their actual proceedings had been concealed, even from the suspicions of the two inmates of the house, and on the mystery that habitually shrouded Bartram Hof, and all its belongings from the eyes of the outer world. Strangely enough, he fancied that I had made my escape long before the room was entered. And, even if he were arrested, there was no evidence, he was certain, to connect him with the murder, all knowledge of which he would stoutly deny. There was an inquest on the body of my uncle, and Dr. Jokes was the chief witness. They found that his death was caused by an excessive dose of ladenum accidentally administered by himself. It was not until nearly a year after the dreadful occurrences at Bartram that Dickon Hakees was arrested on a very awful charge and placed in jail. It was an old crime, committed in Lancashire, that had found him out. After his conviction, as a last chance, he tried a disclosure of all the circumstances of the unsuspected death of the Frenchwoman. Her body was discovered buried where he indicated, in the inner court of Bartram Hof, and, after due legal inquiry, was interred in the churchyard at Feltrum. Thus I escaped the horrors of the witness box, or the far worst torture of a dreadful secret. Dr. Briarley, shortly after Lady Nullis had described to him the manner in which Dudley entered my room, visited the house of Bartram Hof, and minutely examined the windows of the room in which Mr. Charke had slept, on the night of his murder. One of these he found provided with powerful steel hinges, very craftily sunk and concealed in the timber of the window frame, which was secured by an iron pin outside, and swung open on its removal. This was the room in which they had placed me, and this was the contrivance by means of which the room had been entered. The problem of Mr. Charke's murder was solved. I have pinned it. I sit for a moment, breathless. My hands are cold and damp. I rise with a great sigh and look out on the sweet green landscape and pastoral hills, and see the flowers and birds and the waving boughs of glorious trees, all images of liberty and safety. And as the tremendous nightmare of my youth melts into air, I lift my eyes in boundless gratitude to the God of all comfort, whose mighty hand and outstretched arm delivered me. When I lower my eyes and unclass my hands, my cheeks are wet with tears. A tiny voice is calling me, Mama! and a beloved, smiling face with his dear father's silken brown tresses peeps in. Yes, starling, our walk, come away! I am Lady Ilbury, happy in the affection of a beloved and noble-hearted husband. The shy, useless girl you have known is now a mother, trying to be a good one, and this, the last pledge, has lived. I am not going to tell of sorrows, how brief has been my pride of early maternity, or how beloved were those whom the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, but sometimes, as smiling on my little boy, the tears gather in my eyes, and he wonders, I can see why they come. I am thinking and trembling while I smile to think how strong is love, how frail is life, and rejoicing that while I tremble that, in the deathless love of those whom mourn, the Lord of life, who never gave a pang in vain, conveys the sweet and ennobling promise of a compensation by eternal reunion. So, through my sorrows, I have heard a voice from heaven say, Right, from henceforward, blessed are the dead, that die in the Lord. This world is a parable, the habitation of symbols, the phantoms of spiritual things immortal shown in material shape. May the blessed second sight be mine to recognize under these beautiful forms of earth the angels who wear them, for I am sure we may walk with them if we will and hear them speak. End of chapter 66. End of Uncle Silas by J. Sheridan Lafanyu